The Early Research Scholars Program: Analyzing Correlation with Academic Outcomes in Computer Science Students

This poster presents a study of the academic outcomes of students who participate in the Early Research Scholars Program (ERSP) at the University of California, San Diego. We investigated whether participation in ERSP improves the retention and academic outcomes of students in computing majors compared to a matched control group and whether there are demographic differences in these outcomes. Our control group comprised students who matched each of the 190 ERSP participants on admit year, department, GPA, race/ethnicity, gender, and transfer status. We found that participants were retained in computing at higher rates than the control group (95.6% vs. 90.2%), though the difference was only statistically significant for women students (96.1% vs. 83.0%). The overall ATE of ERSP on GPA was 0.083 grade points. Within the program, there was no significant improvement in post-program GPA distributions for minority ERSP participants compared to their non-minority peers.